Burren College of Art Global Ecologies Studio Summer School
Burren College of Art

Burren College of Art

Global Ecologies Studio Summer School

Newtown, Ireland

Summer Course

1 month

English

Full time

EUR 4,800 / per month *

On-Campus

* includes tuition, studio, and housing based on twin room occupancy in self-catering accommodation

Key Summary

About: The Global Ecologies Studio Summer School at the Burren College of Art combines studio and ecological science in the Burren, Western Ireland. It pairs seminars, faculty and visiting-artist discussions, field trips and site-based work to examine earth systems, anthropogenic impacts, environmental and social justice, and activism. Students from art, history, archaeology, anthropology or ecology engage interdisciplinary methods, technical assistance and focused individualized practice to produce a cohesive body of work that investigates landscape, culture and biosphere relationships.

Career Outcomes: Graduates can pursue careers as environmental artists, community arts organizers, science communicators, conservation educators, site-specific installation artists, or cultural ecologists.

The Global Ecologies Studio Summer School is a combined studio and science course offered to students who are looking for an opportunity to explore their studio art practice while examining various concepts found in ecology and earth systems. Based in the Burren of Western Ireland, this course provides a unique experiential and observable location to explore relationships between landscape and the social sphere.

We will investigate, with a combined science and fine art practice, how our social and earth ecologies coexist and interrelate. We will examine ways anthropogenic influences are shaping large-scale interactions of climate, oceans and the biosphere to define our shared environment. Class meetings will include seminars on the scientific discourse around ecological thought, as well as discussions of contemporary fine art practice by faculty and visiting Irish artists, and local experts of The Burren. Multiple field trips and excursions into the local landscape and cultural surroundings will be an important component of the course. Environmental and social justice, ecological thought, and activism will be central themes.

Hugh Pocock

Born in New Zealand and raised in the United States, Hugh Pocock’s work seeks to integrate the dynamics of natural and cultural phenomena. Pocock’s work inhabits the space where the “natural” and the” technological” are inseparable. Organic materials, such as water, air, salt, wood and earth and the processes of labour and industry are the platforms on which Pocock’s work are built. The history and metaphor of the human relationship to natural resources, time and energy are among the issues Pocock investigates in his sculptures, installations, performances and videos. Over the past two decades, he has shown his work in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Santa Fe and Baltimore as well as internationally in the former Soviet Union, Germany and China. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums including Portikus Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, the Wexner Museum, the Santa Monica Museum of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Pocock’s work has also been built for “non-art sites” such as private homes, movie theatres and farms. He received his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and then completed his MFA at UCLA in New Genres.

Hugh Pocock is a full-time faculty member at the Maryland Institute College of Art and is the Co-Director of MICA’s new Major “Ecosystems, Sustainability and Justice”.

He has been the MICA PALS Fellow since 2010.

Tamaru Hunt-Joshi

Tamaru Hunt-Joshi completed her PhD in Ecology in the Departments of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Department of Entomology at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Her scientific background focused mainly on Plant Ecology and Entomology with her PhD research investigating the influence of root and leaf feeding herbivorous, biological control insects on a species of European wetland plant (purple loosestrife) that are invasive to North American wetlands.

Her PhD research was mainly field-based as was subsequent research into fungal-plant interactions as post-doctoral fellow at Arizona State University. Tamaru Hunt-Joshi also holds a Master of Science degree from Imperial College of Science and Technology, and a Masters degree from Cornell University. She also has an undergraduate degree in Biology from Southampton University in the UK.

Since moving to Ireland with her family in 2007, she has maintained a strong interest in ecology and the ecosystems along the west coast of Ireland with a particular interest in botany.







Burren College of Art Summer School offers a concentrated individual-centred course of focused and dedicated learning. Set in the historically rich and environmentally unique context of the Burren in the West of Ireland, this programme is designed to assist students to develop a cohesive body of visual work. The programme is open to artists and art students, but may also be of interest to individuals with knowledge in the fields of history, archaeology, anthropology, ecology or environmental science. Artistic practice and its creative methodologies will be used as a means to investigate interdisciplinary connections between certain sites and the historical, cultural, social and environmental narratives that frame them. Studio projects will emphasise engagement with assigned topics, with dedicated technical assistance appropriate to each students level and concentration provided.

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